Welcome New MAE Faculty

Dr. Craig Dutton / Chair, Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Brian Dennis
Dr. Bumsoo Han

Library Instruction Sessions for Spring 2005
Please contact me to begin scheduling library research instruction sessions for the classes you you will be teaching in the Spring 2005.   It is hard to believe, but that is just around the corner.  I can present general library information sessions or customize to meet the needs of a particular class assignment or research project.  My contact information is at the top of this newsletter.

Open Access: Implications and Cost Models
The Libraries is sponsoring a Virtual Seminar on Open Access in the form of a Webcast as it pertains to libraries.
Day: Wednesday
Date: December 1, 2004
Time: 12:45 pm - 3 pm
Place: Central Library, room 315A
"The scholarly publishing model is changing, so how can you keep its benefits while reaping new opportunities?  Open Access makes journal articles available electronically to readers at no charge, eliminating economic barriers and speeding up peer review processes."  UTA Librarians Antoinette Nelson and Brad Gulliford

Readings related to Open Access
Johnson, R.K. (2002, November).  Institutional Repositories: Partnering with Faculty to Enhance Scholarly Communication. D-Lib Magazine, 8 (11), Retrieved November 23, 2004 from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november02/johnson/11johnson.html

Lawrence, S. (2001). Online or invisible. Nature, 411 (6837), Retrieved November 23, 2004 from http://www.neci.nec.com/%7Elawrence/papers/online-nature01/
or pdf version http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/papers/online-nature01/online-nature01.pdf

Don't forget about RefWorks
RefWorks https://www.refworks.com/Refworks/login.asp?WNCLang=false
Don't forget about RefWorks, the Online Personal Database and Bibliography Creator.  It is a Web-based bibliography and database manager.  Let me know if you would like more information regarding its use and how to use it.   Faculty across campus who have already used it, really like it.  I'm sure you will as well.  If you know someone on the Student Congress, tell them thanks for making it possible.   The Student Congress paid for most of the subscription/license for the next three years.  To use it, click on link above and create an account.  Your account is not automatically your NetID.

Databases

• Reminder about these two new databases
  Jane's All The World's Aircraft
  Aerospace & High Technology Database

• Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)'s Scientific and Technical Information Network (STINET)
  DTIC Public STINET has now been added to the UTA Libraries' A-Z list of databases.

Announcements

• Request Materials Through Faculty Resource Delivery (UTA Faculty only)
  UTA Libraries provide delivery of library resources to faculty members via the UTA Interlibrary Loan Online System.
  Access Services staff will retrieve books, bound periodicals and media held in the UTA Libraries and deliver them to your campus mail box. Requested materials must be from our circulating collections.
  To use this service, you must be a registered user of the UTA Interlibrary Loan Online system. Log into your ILL account and use the "Faculty Resource Delivery Request" form. Please fill out the form completely and give the call number. Find the call number in the UTA Libraries Online Catalog
• SEL News
  Four new public PCs have been added for a total of 28 for access to the libraries' many resources and services. 
  SEL is acquiring more power poles to accommodate the higher number of users with personal laptops.
• Ingenta (http://library.uta.edu/cgi-bin/db/db-ingenta.cgi)
  If the Libraries do not have an article you need, Ingenta may be the solution.   The Libraries'  per article subsidy has increased to $50.00.   The Libraries will cover the cost of an article for you up to $50.00.   If the article costs over $50.00, than you must pay the entire amount.  For more information or assistance, contact me @ howser@uta.edu or call me at ext. 2-7519.

Belated Congratulations

• To Dr. Bob Woods upon the naming, by the Sports Car Club of America's Foundation, of the Dr. Bob Woods Cup, honoring the accomplishments and success of Formula SAE college students in The Tire Rack® SCCA Solo National Championships.
• To Formula SAE team for taking 1st Place in the first international competition in Japan for student designed, built and raced cars.

From the Web
"The greatest equations ever"  article in October 2004 issue of Physics World
Critical Point is a feature of the online version of the magazine Physics World. The article posted here, by philosopher and historian Robert Crease, revisits "the greatest equations ever." He presents the results from his survey of readers in which he asked for a short list of nominations for great equations and "to explain why their nominations belonged on the list and why, if at all, the topic matters." The results place Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism and the Euler equation at the top. Some of the criteria that readers used for selecting their favorites include simplicity, practicality, and historical relevance.
[The Scout Report November 5, 2004]

2004 Science & Technology Web Awards
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00085684-2613-115C-A61383414B7F0000

Interesting Article / News Story
"Storm Riders" by Stephen Budiansky.  "Thanks to hurricanes like Charlie, Frances, and Ivan, engineering students in Florida are getting real-world research experience--and helping to make houses safer in the process."
[Blurb from article]
In the journal PRISM, published by the American Society for Engineering Education, November 2004.  UTA Libraries no longer subscribes to the magazine.  I have a personal copy, if you would like to read the article, let me know.  I'll make arrangements.

"World's First Motor Vehicle 'Black Box' Standard Created at IEEE" http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/pr_1616.html

• Google Scholar
  http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html
  "Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
  Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders your search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.
  Please let us know if you have suggestions, questions or comments about Google Scholar. We recognize the debt we owe to all those in academia whose work has made Google itself a reality and we hope to make Google Scholar as useful to this community as possible. We believe everyone should have a chance to stand on the shoulders of giants." (From the beta site itself)

• From Gary Price's ResourceShelf
  Big News: "Google Scholar" is Born
  By Shirl Kennedy and Gary Price (Internet Librarians)
  The world of online "scholarly" research is changing today as Google introduces Google Scholar. This specialized new interface -- which will NOT be linked from Google's main search page -- will allow users to search a treasure chest of "scholarly material."
  See full post http://www.resourceshelf.com/2004/11/wow-its-google-scholar.html

• Fun Stuff
  From "HowStuffWorks"
  http://home.howstuffworks.com/pop-up-timer.htm
  Thanksgiving is just around the corner and is considered one of the best United States holidays, because it is a time for us to stop, thank God for the blessings He has given us and spend time with our families.  Many of us will be eating turkey, either cooked in your own home or at someone else's home.   If you are the chef  who cooks the turkey (as I am), you may be interested in learning how those pop-up thermometers know when to pop up.   Well click on the link above for the answer.
  By the way, "HowStuffWorks" is one of Scientific American's 2004 Web award winners in the engineering & technology category.

To Questia or Not
UTA Faculty were given the opportunity of attending information sessions on a new electronic product called Questia.  You may have heard about this through your representation on the Faculty Senate and Dean's Council.  Here is a review of Questia from The Charleston Advisor.
http://www.charlestonco.com/review.cfm?id=73.
The Charleston Advisor critically reviews Web products for information professionals.   The UTA Libraries has a current print and electronic subscription to this journal.   You may access it via our online catalog or get access to the electronic version via the electronic journals page http://library.uta.edu/Main/findArticlesNews.uta typing in charleston advisor.   I attended a "training session" for Questia.   I did not find it at all useful for the engineering disciplines.   I feel it is geared to high school students and undergraduates in college setting majoring in the humanities and social sciences.   At best it assists students who do not otherwise have a library close at hand.